Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve been so taken with Tender is the Night is that the things Fitzgerald writes about are also the things I’m interested in. In this two-part post (a finale in the sense that I’ll be moving on to another book after part 2 of the finale, but, as they say, we’ll always have Paris), I’d like to touch on a few of those themes that I have not already mentioned.
Because they all go together:
One of the reasons I love row houses is because they all go together. For myself, I love things that match, and I like to keep all those things together. I have trouble using the shampoo, conditioner, lotion, bath gel, and soap I get from a hotel. They all match. I want to keep them together.
“Rosemary watched Nicole pressing upon her mother a yellow evening bag she had admired, saying ‘I think things ought to belong to the people that like them.’–and then sweeping into it all the yellow articles she could find, a pencil, a lipstick, a little note book, ‘because they all go together.”
Opposite of Accumulation:
I don’t like clutter–in rooms or clothes. Another reason I love row houses is because of how small and manageable they are. Less room; less space in which to accumulate. And oh for that little-girl feeling of a summer dress and just panties and twirling…
“She liked the bareness of the room…”
“…she liked the economy of the weightless dress and espadrilles…”
More tomorrow….
